Alfred Harris: Hope and Glory

Hope and Glory is a pretty melodramatic title for a show that’s essentially about stasis.Based in Seattle, Alfred Harris follows in
the historical lineage (and contemporary glut) of abstract painters who feel
compelled to counterpose order against chaos.This is one of the trustiest of aesthetic tropes:to create compositions in which an underlying
structure is superimposed with snaking organic gestures.In works such as Earplugs, Bug Juice, Harris
contrasts the regularity of squares, rectangles, and lines with the seemingly
arbitrary perambulations of thick gestures, which amble across wood panels like
the half-dazed characters in a Kerouac novel.Like Portland-based painter G. Lewis Clevenger, Harris is dedicated to
the modernist proposition that by integrating the fundamental polarity of
rectilinearity versus curvilinearity, artists can reconcile opposition, liberate
the viewer from conflict, and effect a kind of emotional/spiritual equipoise.That’s a tall order.Happily, Harris’ technique comes as close to achieving
these lofty aims as do most of his contemporaries in the Northwest art scene. Through Sept. 28.

After a recent trip to New York City, Mark Woolley rounded up five New York artists who work in photography and curated them into an invigorating group show at his Pioneer Place gallery. In addition t ...

Only a show this cool could get away with a title this long. In early February, Austin, Texas-based artist Andy Coolquitt did a three-week residency in Portland, taking video and collecting old pipes, ...